It is the final half of the Conference USA regular season and, for the past three years, that has meant it was time ... time for the Miners to shine.

Western Kentucky will visit the Don Haskins Center Thursday night for a 7 p.m. tipoff and the Hilltoppers are playing well, playing well enough to be but a heartbeat out of the top spot in Conference USA.

On paper, this one does not look good for UTEP.

Western Kentucky is 15-6 on the season and 7-1 in Conference USA play — just half a pace behind Middle Tennessee at 8-1. That is the same Middle Tennessee that backhanded UTEP 81-50 Saturday night in Murfreesboro.

Justin Johnson, a 6-foot-7, 245-pounder, was second team All-C-USA a year ago. He is averaging 13.8 points and 9.3 rebounds a game this season.

Western Kentucky now has two graduate transfers, a junior transfer and a freshman. Dwight Coleby is a graduate transfer from Kansas and the 6-9 forward is averaging 12.7 points and 8.6 rebounds a game. Darius Thompson is a 6-4 graduate transfer from Virginia and he is averaging 15.0 points and almost five assists a game.

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UTEP center Matt Wilms (r) sits on the sidelines and watches as the rest of the Miners go through practice Friday afternoon in the Don Haskins Center. The Miners will square off tonight against rival UNM Lobos with tip off at 7 p.m. The Miners are hoping to rebound from a tough loss Thursday night against the NMSU Aggies 80-60 which dropped them to 1-6 for the season.(Photo11: RUBEN R. RAMIREZ/EL PASO TIMES)

Lamonte Bearden is a 6-3 junior transfer from Buffalo and he averages 11.6 points a game. Taveion Hollingsworth, a 6-2 freshman, is averaging 12.5 points a game.

"They’re going to be very similar to what we saw with Middle Tennessee in the fact that they’re big and they’re very physical,” UTEP interim head coach Phil Johnson said. "In fact, they’re probably the most talented team in our league, and that includes Middle Tennessee. They play a lot different than Middle Tennessee but those two big guys (Johnson and Coleby) are outstanding. We’ve got to get tougher and get physical real fast.”

UTEP has been playing without 7-1 senior Matt Willms, who is nursing a foot injury, and 6-9 freshman Tirus Smith, who underwent orthroscopic knee surgery. The Miners hope to get Willms back this weekend but Smith is still a week or two away from a return.

The Miner defense has slipped over the past few weeks, too.

“We’re not a real vocal team and as I’ve said many times, we have been pretty decent defensively in the first half up until the Middle Tennessee game,” Johnson said. “Second half, not as good. Some of that is talking, some of that is having young guys and not being able to talk. Every team in the country has that issue. Some address it and some get better at it and some don’t. We’ll continue to fight and get better.”

UTEP has gotten better and better performances from its freshman class and from sophomore Isiah Osborne. Trey Wade has scored 36 points in his last two games. Evan Gilyard has 70 points in his last five games. Kobe Magee leads Conference USA in 3-point field goal percentage (.630) during conference play.

Osborne, who leads the Miners with a 13.6 scoring average during league play, had a recurrence of his strep throat in his last two road games and, naturally, that affected his performance. But the 6-5 sophomore has been playing well, scoring more than 20 points in three of four games before that last road trip.

At this point, halfway through the 18-game trek, it is a process — first, get healthy and secondly, start playing well together and, two-A, start defending better and, finally, thirdly, start winning basketball games.

And the second half, the opportunity to turn everything from south-bound to north-bound, begins Thursday night in the Haskins Center.

Bill Knight may be reached at 546-6171; bknight@elpasotimes.com; @BillKnightept on Twitter.